The invention concerns an apparatus for filling containers, in particular trays/shaft trays, with rod-shaped products, including a delivery element for delivering empty containers into the region of a filling hopper, each container having shaft walls for forming several shafts within the container, the filling hopper having a receiving region for a mass flow composed of the products, and a storage region for products composed of front wall, rear wall, side walls and a bottom wall, as well as a removal element for removing the filled containers.
Furthermore the invention concerns a method for filling containers, in particular trays/shaft trays, with rod-shaped products, including the steps of: delivering empty containers into the region of a filling hopper by means of a delivery element, each container having shaft walls for forming several shafts within the container, filling the containers with the products forming a mass flow by means of the filling hopper composed of receiving region and storage region, and removing the filled containers by means of a removal element.
Such apparatuses and methods are used in particular in the tobacco-processing industry. In particular in the manufacture of cigarettes or the like, the stockage, temporary storage, etc. of products or intermediate products such as e.g. cigarettes or filter rods may be desirable or necessary. The discharge and input of products into a production process is common. During discharge the products are collected in special containers, the so-called trays. These trays can have a common receiving chamber for the products. However, it has been shown that trays with individual shafts, so-called shaft trays, are frequently easier to handle and ensure storage which is gentle with the products.
From DE 37 08 791 A1 are known a method and an apparatus for filling containers with rod-shaped articles of the tobacco-processing industry. The device mentioned therein is however designed to fill a tray with a single receiving chamber. For this purpose the filling hopper has a storage region in which the products are also stored temporarily in a common receiving chamber. Only in a lower outlet region of the storage region are wall portions provided to form outlet shafts. For filling, the tray is brought from bottom to top into the region of the storage region, such that the tray more or less surrounds the storage region. After opening of shut-off means, the tray is lowered again so that the products pass into the common receiving chamber of the tray. This apparatus is however not suitable for filling the shaft trays described above. Furthermore, the stockage/temporary storage in the storage region of the filling hopper is untidy, which leads to a delay in filling the trays and places a load on the products.
To fill shaft trays, only apparatuses which have a storage region which is essentially composed of a filling funnel are known. Such an apparatus can be found e.g. in DE 1 066 118. This apparatus is suitable for sequential filling of individual shafts of a shaft tray by transporting the shaft tray cyclically under the filling funnel. This method of filling is time-consuming and needs high space requirements. A comparable apparatus can be found in DE 1 103 215.